The Iran-Iraq War

One of the earliest focuses of Iran's interest in exporting
revolution was the Persian Gulf area. The revolutionary leaders viewed
the Arab countries of the Gulf, along with Iraq, as having tyrannical
regimes subservient to one or the other of the superpowers. Throughout
the first half of 1980, Radio Iran's increasingly strident verbal
attacks on the ruling Baath (Arab Socialist Resurrection) Party of Iraq
irritated that government, which feared the impact of Iranian rhetoric
upon its own Shias, who constituted a majority of the population. Thus,
one of the reasons that prompted Iraqi President Saddam Husayn to launch
the invasion of Iran in the early autumn of 1980 was to silence
propaganda about Islamic revolution. Baghdad believed that the
postrevolutionary turmoil in Iran would permit a relatively quick
victory and lead to a new regime in Tehran more willing to accommodate
the interests of Iran's Arab neighbors. This hope proved to be a false
one for Iraq.

From the point of view of foreign relations, Iran's war with Iraq had
evolved through four phases by 1987. During the first phase, from the
fall of 1980 until the summer of 1982, Iran was on the defensive, both
on the battlefield and internationally. The country was preoccupied with
the hostage crisis at the outbreak of the war, and most diplomats
perceived its new government as generally ineffective. During the second
phase, from 1982 to the end of 1984, the success of Iran's offensives
alarmed the Arab states, which were concerned about containing the
spread of Iran's Revolution. The third phase, 1985 to 1987, was
characterized by Iranian efforts to win diplomatic support for its war
aims. The fourth phase began in the spring of 1987 with the involvement
of the United States in the Persian Gulf.

The Iraqi invasion and advance into Khuzestan during phase one
surprised Iran. The Iraqis captured several villages and small towns in
the provinces of Khuzestan and Ilam and, after brutal hand-to-hand
combat, captured the strategic port city of Khorramshahr. The nearby city of Abadan, with its huge
oil-refining complex, was besieged; Iraqi forces moved their offensive
lines close to the large cities of Ahvaz and Dezful. Although the
Iranians stemmed the Iraqi advance by the end of 1980, they failed to
launch any successful counteroffensives. Consequently, Iraq occupied
approximately one-third of Khuzestan Province, from which an estimated
1.5 million civilians had fled. Property damage to factories, homes, and
infrastructure in the war zone was estimated in the billions of dollars.

Although the war had settled into a stalemate by the end of 1980,
during the following eighteen months Iranian forces made gradual
advances and eventually forced most of the Iraqi army to withdraw across
the border. During this period, Iran's objectives were to end the war by
having both sides withdraw to the common border as it had existed prior
to the invasion. Baghdad wanted Tehran's consent to the revision of a
1975 treaty that had defined their common riparian border as the middle
channel of the Shatt al Arab (which Iranians call the Arvand Rud).
Baghdad's proclaimed reason for invading Iran, in fact, had been to
rectify the border; Iraq claimed that the international border should be
along the low water of the Iranian shore, as it had been prior to 1975.
In international forums, Iran generally failed to win many supporters to
its position.

The second phase of the war began in July 1982, when Iran made the
fateful decision, following two months of military victories, to invade
Iraqi territory. The change in Iran's strategic position also brought
about a modification in stated war aims. Khomeini and other leaders
began to say that a simple withdrawal of all forces to the pre-September
1980 borders was no longer sufficient. They now demanded, as a
precondition for negotiations, that the aggressor be punished. Iran's
leaders defined the new terms explicitly: the removal from office of
Iraqi president Saddam Husayn and the payment of reparations to Iran for
war damages in Khuzestan. The Iranian victories and intransigence on
terms for peace coincided with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon;
consequently, Iran decided to dispatch a contingent of its own Pasdaran
to Lebanon to aid the Shia community there. These developments revived
fears of Iranian-induced political instability, especially among the
Arab rulers in the Persian Gulf. In 1984 Iraq acquired French-made
Exocet missiles, which were used to launch attacks on Iranian oil
facilities in the Persian Gulf. Iran retaliated by attacking tankers
loaded with Arab oil, claiming that the profits of such oil helped to
finance loans and grants to Iraq. Iraq responded by attacking ships
loaded with Iranian oil, thus launching what became known as the tanker
war.

By the beginning of 1985, the third phase of the war had begun.
During this phase, Iran consciously sought to break out of its
diplomatic isolation by making overtures to various countries in an
effort to win international support for its war objectives. The dramatic
decline of international oil prices, beginning in the autumn of 1985,
spurred the Iranian initiatives and led to significantly improved
relations with such countries as Oman and Saudi Arabia.

Iraq responded to Iran's diplomatic initiatives by intensifying its
attacks on Iran-related shipping in the Persian Gulf. Iranian
retaliation increasingly focused on Kuwaiti shipping by early 1987.
Iran's actions prompted Kuwait to request protection for its shipping
from both the Soviet Union and the United States. By the summer of 1987,
most European and Arab governments were blaming Iran for the tensions in
the Gulf, and Iran again found itself diplomatically isolated.